Interview with Ellen Hovde

Ellen Hovde: An Interview Author(s): Alan Rosenthal and Ellen Hovde Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Winter, 1978-1979), pp. 8-17 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1211936 Accessed: 19-12-2019 13:56 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly This content downloaded from 67.87.59.209 on Thu, 19 Dec 2019 13:56:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ALAN ROSENTHAL Ellen Hovde: An Interview Ellen Hovde is one of the most gifted and articulate of cinema-verite editors. Alan Rosenthal interviewed her just after she had finished work on Grey Gardens, which posed many of the murderous problems characteristic of editing work in the genre. Hovde produced NET's Head Start in Mississippi, edited Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal, and has also directed. She is probably best known, however, for her association with the Maysles brothers. She co-edited Salesman (1966) with Charlotte Zwerin, and did the same with the Rolling Stones feature Gimme Shelter. On both Christo's Valley Curtain (1974) and Grey Gardens (1975) she is credited as co-director along with David and Albert Maysles, with Muffle Meyer as the fourth director in the latter film. Grey Gardens is a portrait of two unusual women-Edith Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her 55-year-old unmarried daughter, Edie (Little Edie). They lead a squalid hermit-like existence in a crumbling East Hampton mansion on Long Island. The film shows the intimate details of the lives of the two women, with their strengths and vanities there for all to see; it is a beautifully wrought film. As Rosenthal puts it (the following interview will appear in his forth- coming new book on documentary), Grey Gardens "reveals more about human relationships than almost any film I can remember. "But when it was first shown, it was violently criticized by some viewers as an unethical invasion of the women's privacy (though of course they had given consent to being filmed). Such questions are seldom discussed in regard to documentary, though Rosenthal regards them as pertinent and important. (In this case he "totally agrees" with Hovde on these points.) Since completing Grey Gardens Hovde has produced and directed Middle Age for the "Woman Alive" television series. She directed (again with the Maysles and Muffie Meyer) The Burk Family, and produced and directed several films for "Sesame Street." Ellen, the last few years you have been associated be a stage director, and didn't find enough work with the Maysles brothers on various films. What to keep me together. I then found a job in a film were you doing before that; how did you come into school as an administrative assistant, got interested films? in film, and soon apprenticed myself to a film edi- Well, I came into films years ago . through tor who taught at the school. editing. I had originally gone to drama school to I felt that, at least in documentary film (I haven't ? 1978 by The Regents of the Univ. of Calif. 0015-1386/78/1600-0008$00.25 This content downloaded from 67.87.59.209 on Thu, 19 Dec 2019 13:56:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ELLEN HOVDE 9 had much experience in theatrical film, though films like Susan Starr . then there was a film I'm producing and directing one now), the person about the Aga Khan . then a film called The who is doing the editing is doing something very Chair, about a man who is about to be electrocuted, like a mix of writing and stage directing: that per- Paul Crump. And there were films with the son is shaping, forming and structuring the mater- Kennedys and so on. ial, and making the decisions about what is really What did you learn during that time about that going to be there on the screen-what the ideas new style of editing totally non-scripted films? are, what the order of events will be, where the Well, first of all, speaking technically, we had to emphasis will be. develop a whole new attitude toward how the film These responsibilities very often rest almost en- would look. The camera wasn't on a tripod any- tirely with the editor. Some documentary directors more and was swooping around all over the place, do sit in the cutting room and take part in these zooming in to find focus and zooming out again decisions, but many do not. Many simply give the (often in the middle of something very important!), editor the footage and say, "when you have a cut, running out of film at the worst possible moments let me know . .", and they go away. So the editor, -and of course nothing was repeatable, it was real alone, makes absolutely basic decisions-the sort life. So we would cut and patch and discard old of decisions that the director and producer, when conventions and invent new ones. On the good side they come back, have to base their decisions upon. the films had a kind of new vitality and energy that They may have photographic memories or may was very exciting; on the bad, we all sometimes have taken detailed notes about the material . tried to push footage around and convince our- they will say, ". .. look, there must be a better selves we had something on film, that we didn't. shot than that" or ". we must somehow make But I guess the most important thing we learned the point how poor these people are" and so on- was that you have to take an enormous amount of all valuable criticisms. But the way things are struc- material, shot in real time, and sift it and sort it tured, and whether the film is "working" to make and condense it into a "dramatically told" story. the desired points . that is really done in the People who shoot this kind of film shoot a lot, be- cutting room. cause if you are shooting an event that doesn't have Are you talking basically about cinema verite or those predetermined beginnings, middles, and have you worked with the old pre-structured, pre- ends, you don't know where the critical moment is scripted films? How do you get the balance be- going to be-often you don't even know what the tween the director's responsibility and yours? story is going to be. You think you do, because I've worked with all those systems. There are you've got to have something to hold on to when documentaries that are pre-structured-some peo- you're shooting, but unless it's a film like On The ple even record a narration first and then have you Pole, which was another of those Filmmakers films go out and shoot pictures to fit it. Quite boring. -a film about the Indianapolis 500, and you know Yes, I've done that. And then there are those mon- there is going to be a race and there's going to be tages that everyone used to do, usually to music a finish to the race . unless it's like that, you . commercials still use that technique. It's diffi- don't actually know in a lot of these films what the cult to do well, and it's certainly the editor who outcome is going to be, or who the important char- makes it work if it's going to. But it's in cinema acter will be. verite that the editing takes on the same importance The first person who has to contribute to those as the camera work ... and camera work and edit- decisions is the person who decides to film that ing combined are directing, in cinema verite. particular situation; and then the cameraperson, What was the first veritefilm that you cut? whoever that is, has to make a constant, running Oh, boy! I suppose it was at a company called series of split-second decisions about what's hap- "Filmmakers," with Bob Drew and Ricky Leacock pening and what will happen next and how impor- and Don Pennebaker; and the Maysles were there tant it is . The person who is taking sound is as well. We did many films-in fact, we all learned often the so-called journalist or reporter, and he or how to do this as we went along, by working on she is often nudging the cameraperson, saying oh, This content downloaded from 67.87.59.209 on Thu, 19 Dec 2019 13:56:36 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 10 ELLEN HOVDE do that, do that, while the cameraperson is doing do independent productions. I make films for this, and this. (If they have a good rapport they "Sesame Street." I'm making right now a dra- work it out between them; if not, well, camera- matic fiction film on a grant from the National men have been known not to shoot any close-ups Endowment for the Arts.

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